


Leagues Apart

by Ostentenacity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breakup, Bullying, Canon Ace Character, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, Past Georgie Barker/Jonathan Sims, Self-Worth Issues, TMAHCWeek 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26087974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostentenacity/pseuds/Ostentenacity
Summary: The original speaker wrests back control of the conversation. “Really, though, Georgie could probably date anyone she feels like! I don’t get why she’s wasting her time on…that.”“She’s way out of his league,” another voice remarks sagely.A sour feeling starts building up in the pit of Jon’s stomach.---Georgie is out of Jon’s league. He doesn’t quite know what that means, but everyone else seems to agree, so it must be true.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan Sims
Comments: 100
Kudos: 331
Collections: Tigress_Den_Of_Amazing_FanFictions





	Leagues Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Magnus Writers Discord Hurt/Comfort Week event, day 1, with the prompt “Self-Worth Issues”.
> 
> Thanks to [dathen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dathen) for beta reading!
> 
> Content warnings at the end.

“Why is she even _with_ him?” 

The words rise above the muddled mass of conversation in the room beyond, making Jon pause. Maybe it’s the speaker’s voice: ringing and clear, accustomed to projection. (Most likely one of the theater crowd that Georgie, and therefore also Jon, is friends with.) Maybe it’s the fact that they’re sitting on the sofa closest to the doorway Jon is lurking behind, rather than the one all the way across the room. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because he’s heard those words before.

From the room beyond, there’s a brief swell of mumbled agreements and laughter. “I mean, it’s clearly not for _looks,”_ the voice continues.

“Must be his sparkling personality, then,” someone else says, and there’s another round of laughter. “Bet the hissy fits are a huge turn-on.” A sour feeling starts building up in the pit of Jon’s stomach.

The original speaker wrests back control of the conversation. “Really, though, Georgie could probably date anyone she feels like! I don’t get why she’s wasting her time on… _that.”_

“She’s _way_ out of his league,” another voice remarks sagely.

This was a bad idea. Georgie had said people brought dates and friends to these kinds of parties all the time, so it didn’t matter that he hadn’t technically been invited, but clearly, he’s not wanted here. He turns and reclaims his jacket from the coatrack where he’d draped it only a minute before.

Then the conversation suddenly goes quiet, and Georgie’s voice floats in from the next room. “Come on, guys, lay off it,” she says, sounding vaguely annoyed. A few moments later, Georgie sticks her head through the doorway. “Hey, Jon, they have those weird olives you like—oh. Did something come up?”

The sight of Georgie, all dressed and made up for the occasion, frowning concernedly at him instead of enjoying the party, makes Jon’s stomach shrivel up and die even more. He considers telling her what their friends had been saying a moment ago—but no, she’d already told them to knock it off, so she’d heard what they’d been pointing out, and probably just doesn’t feel like discussing it right now. And if Jon throws a _hissy fit_ just because they’d made a couple of—well, pretty accurate, if he’s being honest—observations, it would only prove them right even more.

Jon puts on a smile. The expression doesn’t fit quite right, and he can tell that Georgie can tell, but it’ll have to do. “Yeah, I just remembered I have a paper due soon,” he lies. “Sorry. You should stay, enjoy the party.”

Georgie’s eyes narrow. “You sure?”

Jon’s fairly sure she’s seen through his flimsy excuse, but she doesn’t seem interested in calling him on it, so he perseveres. “I’m sure,” he says. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

There’s a beat, and then Georgie gives a little half shrug and smiles. “Okay,” she says. Then she puts on an air of mock solemnity and adds, “I’ll pour out a glass—well, a bowl—of olives in your honor.”

Normally, Jon enjoys Georgie’s antics, but now, they just make him feel worse. Rather than trying to come up with an answering quip, he just waves and walks out the door. 

* * *

Jon can’t honestly say he’s surprised when they break up a few months later. It’s not loud, which he’s grateful for; there are no accusations, no shouting. Not even really much of a fight. It starts with an _I just feel like you never really talk to me_ and ends with a _don’t be a stranger, all right?_ The whole ordeal takes less than twenty minutes. 

He goes back to his flat afterwards, and sits on his uncomfortable secondhand armchair in silence for a while. He doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do. He has a vague impression that sad pop music and sugary foods are traditional, but he’s not much for pop music and he doesn’t feel like grocery shopping, so instead he just… sits.

Georgie still has half a carton of his favorite ice cream in her freezer from their movie night last week. Georgie’s armchair is more comfortable than his. 

Abruptly, Jon finds that he’s crying. It’s stupid. He’s being stupid. It’s just a chair. And besides, Georgie had said that they could still be friends, so it’s not like he’s never going to visit her flat again. Most likely. Probably.

Oh, lord. Maybe there’s a rule about that. Jon racks his brain, trying to remember if he’s ever heard anything about visiting an ex’s home.

Then he realizes that Georgie is his _ex-girlfriend,_ and the rest of the evening gets away from him.

* * *

Jon wakes up the next morning with a fierce headache and nausea roiling in his stomach. He’s not generally fond of alcohol—it tends to make him accidentally embarrass himself, which he _hates_ —and doesn’t keep any in his flat, so it can’t be a hangover. So why…?

Then the miserable previous day comes back to him all at once, and Jon wants to sink through his mattress into the floor and never get up. 

Dragging himself through the motions is hard. His useless excuse for a brain seems to take some unholy delight in reminding him about Georgie once every thirty seconds or so. 

He thinks about sending her a text, more than once. Just to—to say hello, or ask how her day is going. To avoid being a stranger, as she’d put it. But that’s weird, isn’t it? Texting an ex _(an ex, an ex-girlfriend, Georgie is your ex-girlfriend, Christ, stop thinking about it)_ the day after breaking up with them. It’s definitely weird. Jon doesn’t want to be Georgie’s weird ex-boyfriend.

Another day goes by, and Jon doesn’t text. A week goes by, and Jon doesn’t text. A month. A month and a half.

Georgie doesn’t text either. 

Neither do any of their mutual friends. Which, Jon supposes, makes them really Georgie’s friends, not their mutual friends. That’s all right. He never had any illusions about his own likability. It was nice, sometimes, to have a social circle, but he’d gotten the distinct impression that they’d all been putting up with him for her sake. He understands. There isn’t a lot he wouldn’t be willing to put up with to be around Georgie, either.

Jon thinks about going to her degree ceremony. As a—as a friend, he supposes. He’s not due to graduate until next year, and it’s too late to ask for a ticket, but he could be there afterwards when the theater empties. He could go up to her, say hello. Apologize for the radio silence. Make some weak excuse, as usual.

Except that his weak excuses had been a point of contention, in their carefully-not-a-fight. She’d said that she hadn’t liked it when he’d lied about schoolwork to get out of social engagements. She’d said she’d rather he say it plainly when he didn’t want to spend time with her, rather than having to guess at his real feelings all the time.

So, no weak excuse. How would honesty sound? _Hi, Georgie, sorry I haven’t so much as said hello in six weeks, it’s just that I miss you all the time and I’ve barely talked to anyone since we broke up because everyone I know likes you better so I’m afraid that anything I say is going to come out intense and wrong._

God, no. Maybe…

Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t go. Maybe it’s better if he’s just not in her life anymore. He’s never been sure exactly what it meant when people said that Georgie was out of his league, and he’d never quite worked up the nerve to ask her or anyone else for clarification. But he _does_ understand that it means that she’s better than him, that he’s inadequate in some way, that they were mismatched. And the sentiment had been so widespread and so unanimous that it must have been very obvious. 

Even Georgie herself had never disagreed. She’d just seemed annoyed to be reminded of the fact.

Maybe she’ll be happier without her weird, uncommunicative, ill-tempered, _inadequate_ ex-boyfriend hanging around. If he cares about her—and he does, he really, _really_ does—then maybe the kindest thing is to bow out quietly, rather than subjecting her to more of his, well, entire self. Even if he’s miserably lonely and she’s one of only a very small number of people he’s met who seemed to actually _like_ him. Even if the idea of never hearing from her again hurts like a physical blow.

She must have come to the same conclusion, because the silence continues. She’s always been a better communicator than he is, and she never plays mind games. If she doesn’t say anything, it’s because she doesn’t want to hear from him. 

He almost breaks his own rule and apologizes for not showing up for her graduation, but he holds firm. It doesn’t matter how much he misses her; it doesn’t matter whether or not he could, eventually, become the sort of person who’d deserve her company. That ship sailed a long time ago. She’s clearly realized, just as he has, that she’s better off without him.

* * *

(Georgie spends half the afternoon after her degree ceremony hanging around the theater, looking for Jon in the surrounding streets. Eventually, she’s forced to conclude that even his ridiculous affection for the bizarre trappings of academia couldn’t make him care enough to come say hello. Well, that’s… fine. 

She must’ve been wrong about him. She’s still glad he’d taken the breakup as well as he did—she would have hated to get into a shouting match with him—but she finds herself wishing he’d been… more upset, she supposes, as much as that’s a terrible thing to wish for. He is— _was_ —her favorite person in the world, even if their romantic entanglement didn’t end up working out. 

It hurts to realize that he didn't care enough to make even a token effort at being friends after the fact. So, although she usually makes a point of trying to talk things out before going quiet on an erstwhile friend, she decides that this time, she’ll leave it up to him. He’ll have to be the one to make the first move, for once.

But he doesn’t call, doesn’t text. Not even an apology—or one of his signature terrible excuses—for not showing up. She almost goes back on her decision and contacts him first after all, but in the end, she holds firm. She refuses to carry on a friendship where she has to do all the work.)

* * *

A year passes. Jon attends his own degree ceremony, and afterwards, walks past clusters of people laughing and hugging and taking pictures as he makes his way to the bus stop and his one-bedroom flat.

Two years pass. Jon finishes his master’s degree. He thinks his grandmother would probably have been proud of him. He doesn’t think she would have made the trek all the way to Oxford to celebrate with him, though.

Three years pass. Jon gets a job at the Magnus Institute in London. His coworkers are pleasant, he supposes. For the most part, anyway. He tries to be pleasant in return, with mixed success. He still overhears gossip about himself, from time to time, but it’s more bearable these days. Being known as an odd, sometimes-rude researcher is better than being known as an odd, sometimes-rude boyfriend. At least this way, he’s the only victim of his own social ineptitude. (Well, he’s not the _only_ victim, but he is the only _consistent_ victim, which is what really counts.)

Some of the other researchers are more forgiving of his missteps than others. Tim Stoker is gregarious enough that Jon’s barbs bounce right off him, and Jon finds him mostly non-irritating in return. Sasha James is almost as blunt as he is, if not nearly as prickly, and they find their way to a rapport of sorts. They’re not friends, not exactly, but they’re work friends, which is almost as good.

He doesn’t date. He considers it, once or twice, but his heart isn’t in it. 

(And even if he did meet someone, how would he be able to figure out if he’s good enough for them, if he’s _in their league,_ if he doesn’t really talk to people outside of work? He still hasn’t figured out how everyone else can tell so easily, so it’s not like he can make the judgement himself.)

* * *

One day, while hunting through an online forum trying to corroborate a statement, Jon stumbles across a discussion of some new paranormal history podcast. It wouldn’t have caught his eye except for the name of the host: Georgina Barker. 

It can’t be a coincidence. Georgina isn’t exactly a common name, and Georgie had used to talk a lot about her pipe dream of hosting a supernatural-themed radio show. Jon, unexpectedly, finds himself smiling. He’s glad that Georgie found a way to get her show after all. 

That evening, he queues up the first episode to play while he eats dinner. It’s hard to hear her voice again after so long; the old ache resurfaces, more strongly than it has in a long time. But it’s all right. The show is a little rough around the edges, a little amateurish, but Jon finds that he doesn’t mind. For once, he’s not even bothered by the “spooky” paranormal investigation angle. 

Not for the first time, he considers reaching out. Considers telling her he listened to the first few episodes of her new podcast, congratulating her for the achievement, apologizing for letting their relationship fall apart so completely. As usual, though, he dismisses the idea. It’s been years. She’ll have moved on by now. She probably won’t appreciate the reminder.

* * *

A few more years go by. Things are—good. Fine. Jon still doesn’t have any close friends, but he does have Tim and Sasha at work. His job is enjoyable, inasmuch as any job can be. 

Jon could get used to this. Well—he _is_ used to this. But if this was his life from now on, for the next however many years, he thinks he’d be just fine with that. He doesn’t know if he’d call himself happy, exactly, but he’s content. 

He’s still lonely. But it’s sort of reassuring to be lonely. If he’s not close to anyone, he can’t hurt them the way he hurt Georgie. And he _must_ have hurt her, he must have, because she’d always been so good at tending her relationships, at nurturing her connections with people she wanted to keep in her life with frequent conversations and outings. At pruning away people who upset or bothered her with distance and polite-but-firm rejection. 

When she’d broken up with him, he hadn’t thought that she’d been angry, or very upset; but then, he hadn’t noticed how dissatisfied she’d been in the months before. And besides, memories get distorted over time. Their last conversation was probably much more acrimonious than he remembers. He just didn’t notice, because of how awful he was— _is_ —at being a pleasant human being.

So the loneliness is good. It means he’s doing the right thing. 

Everything is fine.

* * *

And then Jon is offered a promotion, which he accepts, because that’s what you do with promotions. And maybe it’s a little strange, because Jon doesn’t have seniority, but Elias wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t think Jon was the right person for the job, right? (After all, he may not be good at interacting with other people, but he works hard. He’s dedicated. _That_ must be why.)

And then everything goes to hell, very, very fast.

* * *

Georgie didn’t know who she expected to find knocking on her door at eight o’clock sharp on a Friday morning, but it wasn’t her nearly-eight-years-estranged ex. Who, incidentally, looks like he hasn’t slept in a week, and sounds like he’s on the verge of crying when he asks her if he can stay with her for a few days while he straightens matters out with his job, which he’s apparently just been fired from, and his flat, which he can’t return to for reasons he doesn’t share.

“I’m sorry,” he says, wringing his hands. “I know we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms. I wouldn’t dream of bothering you, it’s just—I don’t really have anyone else I can ask. The only other people I know are my coworkers, and…”

In that situation, Georgie would have shut the door on almost anyone else. But she’s always had a soft spot for Jon, and she still misses him even after so long, and she maybe feels a little bit bad for trying to make him figure out what her silence meant on his own when he’d always struggled to understand any feelings-talk that wasn’t blunt to the point of rudeness. And although he’d always been prickly and rude, he’d never, not once, given her the slightest hint that he might become dangerous or violent—not in frustration, not in anger, not in fear. 

And also, his hair is graying, and he has crow’s feet, and he’s absolutely covered in strange, deep scars, and she could swear he’s lost weight—which wouldn’t be _that_ unusual a change for someone she hasn’t seen in nearly a decade, except that he hadn’t had any to spare in the first place.

“Of course,” says Georgie. “Please come in.”

* * *

Jon isn’t the same person that he used to be, though it’s easy to recognize him as the older, mellowed version of the young man she’d once been head over heels for. He’s not quite as snobby, but he’s still just as stubborn; he’s more considerate, but no less fussy or perfectionistic. Georgie had expected things to be awkward between them, and they are, to a degree, but he’s shockingly easy to get along with, even after all these years. 

She’s reconnected with other old friends before, but more often than not, the encounters end anticlimactically once she and the erstwhile friend realize they have nothing in common anymore. This is the opposite: after a few hours of stop-and-start conversation while she gets Jon set up and settled in, she finds that chatting idly with him is familiar. Comfortable. 

It’s so comfortable, in fact, that she catches herself wondering if maybe the breakup had been hasty, and what if she gave the whole dating thing another shot? In the spirit of fairness, she gives that thought a moment of consideration, but then dismisses it with the mental equivalent of a snort. Jon may still be enjoyable to spend time with, but that doesn’t mean her reasons for breaking up with him hadn’t been good, and it certainly doesn’t mean she’s still interested in him that way. Besides, she’s only spent half a day with him in eight years. She doesn’t _necessarily_ know him much better than any stranger off the street, no matter how nice it is to slip back into their old banter.

And it is clear that, for all that things between them are unexpectedly easy, there’s something wrong with him. Or— _about_ him. He seems… well, haunted, for lack of a better term. He jumps at every clatter and clang from the street, and slinks off towards the back of the house at any sound of people passing by outside. While helping with the dinner dishes, he crushes a dozen ants, one by one, with a ruthlessness she’d only ever seen him employ towards spiders back when they’d been in university. (She tells him to cut it out, partially to see how he’ll react, and is gratified when he apologizes and asks how she’d prefer to deal with them. He doesn’t seem entirely sanguine, watching the ants explore the ant trap she sets out, but he doesn’t go back to squishing them either.)

And, as she finds out in the early hours of the morning the day after he arrived on her doorstep, he’s also having trouble sleeping. He doesn’t mean to wake her, and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t even realize she _has_ woken up; he doesn’t come to her room and he doesn’t mention it the next morning. She’d never have known if she hadn’t heard him through the thin wall separating the master bedroom from the next room over, talking to the Admiral in a voice that trembled.

She waits for him to talk to her about it—about _any_ of it. He never brings it up.

* * *

Georgie doesn’t like having to persuade Jon to open up to her. She hadn’t liked it while they were dating, and she doesn’t like it now. He remains frustratingly vague on the subject of what exactly the _hell_ had happened at his old job, and Georgie doesn’t push too much; partially because whatever it was is clearly still upsetting him and she doesn’t want to seem prying, and partially because she doesn’t want to set herself up for frustration when he inevitably turns evasive. 

But she can’t help being curious, and after a few days, she finally gives into the temptation to drop a carefully crafted question or two. She offers up an anecdote from her day job—some ridiculous thing that her coworker Jeff had said in conversation—and then casually follows it up with, “How about you? Any interesting people back at the office?”

“Well, there’s Martin,” Jon answers in that thoughtless, offhand way that means she’s successfully managed to trick a straightforward answer out of him. 

“Oh?” says Georgie, deliberately casual.

Jon nods, still distracted by the shelf he’s dusting. “I didn’t like him much when we started working together, but he’s… grown on me, I suppose? I used to think he was sort of—well, I didn’t used to think much of his abilities, but I wasn’t really being fair to him. He’s actually quite clever. Sometimes has a bit of a, well, an _unorthodox_ approach to research, but I can’t deny that he’s dedicated.” Jon pauses, apparently lost in thought, before continuing in the same matter-of-fact tone, like he’s describing this man to a potential employer. “He likes old fashioned tape recorders. And he writes poetry.” 

Georgie blinks, momentarily thrown by the surprisingly personal twist. “Poetry, huh?”

Unfortunately, Jon finally seems to realize that he’s answered a question in depth, and his shoulders draw together. “Oh. Um, yes. It’s… not half bad, actually? Uh. Don’t tell—well, no, you probably won’t meet him.” Jon scratches at the nape of his neck with one hand. “There’s also Tim? At work, I mean? He’s… well, he’s not as friendly as he used to be, not after the whole infestation thing—”

“Infestation thing?”

Jon gestures awkwardly at the left side of his face, the side with the denser collection of clustered round scars. “Parasites. They looked a lot like—like large, silver earthworms? Tim and I got the worst of it. Anyway.” Georgie desperately wants to stop and ask for more details, but Jon is already moving on. “There’s also Sasha. Or. Um. There _was_ Sasha, I suppose I should say.”

“Was?”

Jon hunches even further. “She, um. She’s missing. I think…” He takes a ragged breath. “I have a suspicion that she—that she died. I can’t prove it, but…” 

Georgie dismisses her first instinct, which is to ask him again _what the hell kind of place he was working in,_ and lays a hand cautiously on his shoulder. He jumps slightly, but doesn’t pull away. “I’m sorry,” she says, as gently as she can manage. “That sounds really rough.”

Jon shrugs. Georgie takes that as a cue to drop her hand. Jon scrubs both hands over his face, hard, and then absently rubs at the shoulder she’d been touching. 

For a minute, it seems like he might say something. Then he gives himself a little shake and goes back to dusting. It’s clear he doesn’t intend to say anything more. Georgie lets him get away with it, this time; obviously, she’d stumbled across some less-than-pleasant memories.

* * *

Unpleasant memories aside, though, Jon’s brief tangent about this Martin person is interesting. Jon rarely admits to being wrong, and the fact that he’d called the man unorthodox _and_ brought up that he writes poetry, both without a drop of disdain, is enough to catch Georgie’s attention. 

It might be that Jon has just changed as a person. It might also be something else. But it’s none of her business, and also Jon’s social (or love?) life is not her job to worry about, so Georgie doesn’t really plan on expending the necessary effort to suss out which it is.

Luckily for her internal gossip-monger, she doesn’t end up needing to. Jon mentions Martin again only a couple of days later, offhand; he’s tall enough to reach things on upper shelves, but “not annoying about it,” apparently. Over the next week or two, Georgie puts together a surprisingly comprehensive picture of the guy: tall, broad, smiles a lot, ginger (but not as much as the Admiral), sentimental (but not annoyingly so), wears jumpers rather than jackets, has a green thumb, possibly gets chronic headaches (Jon isn’t quite sure about that one), has a surprisingly high spice tolerance for someone who doesn’t actually _like_ spicy food, and has a soft spot for all manner of furry animals (especially dogs, but, unfortunately for Jon, also especially spiders).

Jon doesn’t talk this much about his other coworkers. Or, for that matter, about anyone. Or even any _thing,_ really. He doesn’t even seem to notice he’s doing it. 

And while she may have started out determined not to take this too quickly, she feels their old camaraderie coming back more and more every day. For all that they’re exes whose breakup didn’t exactly go smoothly, he certainly doesn’t seem uncomfortable talking (and laughing) about her recent romantic escapades. (If they can even be called romantic, given how they usually go.) And she laughs right along with him, because they’re funny and _he’s_ funny and she really, really likes him, annoying caginess aside. Eventually, she figures, _it’s what friends do, right?_

“So, this Martin,” she says, lounging next to Jon on the sofa as he wraps up yet another anecdote, this time about how Martin had insisted on taking him to A&E after Jon had had a run-in with a bread knife. “It sounds like you like him.”

Jon blinks, nonplussed. “Well… yes? I suppose? I mean, he’s a diligent worker. And pleasant to have around. The office, I mean.”

Georgie raises her eyebrows at him.

“What?” Jon continues to look confused, until finally it clicks and he scowls. “No, that’s not… I’m not going to… No.”

“Why not?” asks Georgie, amused.

He rolls his eyes and huffs, which is more or less what she’d been expecting. What she doesn’t expect is for him to say, in his dry, matter-of-fact way, “Well, I’m not… I don’t think we’re really in the same league.”

She stares at him, feeling suddenly off-balance. “What does _that_ mean?” she asks, perhaps a touch more heated than she meant to. She hadn’t expected that kind of talk from him—hadn’t thought he was shallow enough to subscribe to that sort of perspective on dating. Come to think of it, hadn’t he been on the wrong side of it himself in university—?

Jon’s voice disrupts her thoughts. “I—I’m not exactly sure how people tell these things?” he says, seemingly taken aback by the force of her reaction. “But I thought—he’s, well, he’s nice, and he’s very clever, and he has a good sense of humor? And everyone at the office seems to like him, so I just thought, well…” He trails off as though the conclusion to that sentence were obvious, but Georgie just stares at him, more confused than before. Jon sighs. “So I figured, best not even bother him, right? I mean, even if he _weren’t_ out of my league, I’m still—”

Ah. Well, at least he hadn’t been sounding like an egotistical prick on purpose. “Jon, come on, that’s ridiculous. Does he like _you?”_

Jon scowls, annoyed at her interruption. “I don’t see how that’s here or there,” he answers stiffly. “Didn’t you hear me? He’s out of my—”

Georgie pinches the bridge of her nose. “Do you _really_ care that much about what other people say? Or—ugh, is he the sort of guy who wouldn’t date someone just because his friends don’t think they’re attractive enough, because, Jon, really, you could do _so_ much better—”

“Attrac—what do you mean, if I care about, about what other people say?” Jon splutters. “It’s just—I mean, it’s just a fact, isn’t it? I wasn’t in your league, which means I’m probably not in _his_ league either.” His voice turns bitter. “I’m not about to embarrass myself like that _again.”_

Georgie’s stomach sinks. “Jon, you know—you _do_ know that league stuff’s all bullshit, right? What people said in uni, it was just—it didn’t mean anything. You _know_ that. Right?”

Jon stares at her like she’s grown a second head. “What.”

“It’s always been bullshit,” says Georgie. “It was just—bored, mean-spirited people passing judgement because they didn’t have anything better to do. That’s all it was.”

Now Jon is shaking his head. “No. No, because—no! That’s not—you were better, I wasn’t—I wasn’t good enough, not _really,_ and everyone could tell. _That’s_ all it was.” His hands are trembling. 

There’s a lump in Georgie’s throat. She swallows, trying to get rid of it. “You felt like—like you weren’t good enough?”

Jon sighs, a kind of relief on his face, and runs a hand through already-messy hair. “Yes, because I _wasn’t.”_

“Is that—” Georgie swallows again. “Is that why you—why you never talked to me, after?”

“You didn’t want to hear from me,” says Jon, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“I told you not to be a stranger!”

“I thought you were just being polite!”

“Since _when_ do I say things I don’t mean?”

“Since when do you not tell people what they did wrong?”

Georgie blinks. “What?”

“You always…” Jon drops his gaze to the floor and starts picking at one of his fingernails. “I watched you end friendships. More than once. You always told them why. So, I thought, if you just stopped talking to me, that I’d… _done_ something. That I’d been worse than I thought.”

“Oh.” Georgie winces. It’s certainly not a conclusion that _she’d_ ever jump to without at least asking what she’d done, but… “I s’pose I can see how it might have looked that way. But I was just… I was trying to get you to make the first move for once, you know? Put in the effort without my having to ask for it?”

“Oh,” Jon mumbles.

They both breathe in silence for a few moments.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” asks Georgie softly, at length. “That you felt that way, I mean?”

“I thought you knew,” says Jon, just as quietly. “I thought that’s why you never said anything, when people said… stuff like that, about me, about us. I thought you were trying not to make me feel worse about it.”

“I said plenty!” Georgie cries, stung. “I _hated_ it when people said those kinds of things! I defended you!” She pauses. “Didn’t I? I could’ve sworn…”

Jon shrugs uncomfortably. “You told them to _stop_ plenty of times. In my hearing, at least. I just… I thought you just didn’t like the reminder. That I was… you know.” 

“God,” Georgie mutters under her breath. “We really made a mess of it, didn’t we?”

Jon’s next exhale stumbles over the line into an exhausted laugh. She laughs along with him for a moment, and then the mood leaves them all at once, and they both sigh bitterly.

“So…” Jon begins, and then trails off.

“Yes?”

“So it wasn’t—I mean, it was all just a—a misunderstanding? You didn’t think I was—that I was boring, or annoying, or more—” His voice quavers. “More trouble than I was worth?”

Georgie frowns thoughtfully. “Boring, no, never. Annoying, well—we both got on each other’s nerves sometimes, but that’s not—that didn’t mean you were _bad,_ it just meant we were both people. And…” She looks over at where Jon is still studying the floor. “I didn’t measure your worth in trouble, you know?” Jon swallows hard, still silent beside her. “I didn’t try to… to weigh all the times you made me happy against times I was frustrated with you, or with us. I never wanted to be rid of you. I just wanted to go back to the way things were, before we started making each other _un_ happy, more often than not.” She runs a hand through her hair. “Or, at least, before _I_ started feeling that way. I guess I didn’t know as much about what was going on in your head as I thought. But I _never_ thought you weren’t—weren’t _good enough.”_

“Thank you,” Jon mumbles.

“For what?” 

He shrugs, and wraps his arms around his own middle. “Saying that.”

Georgie studies him for a minute. “Do you want a hug?” she asks, eventually.

“You don’t have to bother,” he says quickly, like he’d always said, every time she’d asked him if he wanted a hug, or a kiss, or a glass of water while she was already by the sink, or the window opened to let some air in. She’d thought it was a funny little mannerism, and had even started saying it back to him for a bit, but she’d dropped it when he’d seemed uncomfortable. 

She’d assumed it was because he’d thought she was mocking him. Now, though…

“It isn’t a bother at all,” she says firmly. “Do you want a hug?” A pause. “Do nothing for yes, shake your head for no.”

Jon rolls his eyes, color rising faintly in his cheeks. He doesn’t shake his head, though.

“Taking that as a yes,” says Georgie, and wraps her arms around him.

(After about five minutes, Georgie picks up a book from the coffee table and starts reading over Jon’s shoulder. He mumbles something about getting out of her way and tries to disengage himself, but she tells him not to move on her account in a tone that brooks no disagreement. They remain entangled for a full half-hour more before Jon is finally satisfied.)

* * *

To both of their relief, neither is interested in attempting to revive their long-buried romance. It might not have ended for quite the reason either of them thought at the time, but it is, nevertheless, firmly in the past. To their even greater relief, they both want to keep giving their friendship another shot, even once Jon eventually gets a place of his own again. 

Things aren’t perfect between them. Jon’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, in ways that Georgie finds increasingly intolerable. Jon won’t stop recording statements. They argue. Jon burns his hand. They argue again. Jon finally comes clean about his suspicions, and the half-formed ideas he has of what’s going on. Georgie tells him a story she’s never told anyone before.

They still can’t agree on what to do.

And then Jon goes and gets himself _blown up_ along with two other people, and Georgie _really_ should have seen something like that coming, but she didn’t, and suddenly there’s a Jon-shaped hole in her life _again._

The better part of a year passes, and Jon continues to be gone.

After so long, she’d just about given up hope, but suddenly, with no warning, Jon jerks awake in his hospital bed, in exactly the way coma patients do in movies but never in real life. And he tells her, in a weak but unbroken voice, that he thinks he’s all right.

Georgie wants to scream. She settles for a pained sigh instead.

Jon looks nervously between her and that coworker of his, Basira, who’s brooding in the corner. “I mean, that’s— _good,_ right? I—”

“After a six month coma?” The words are already out of her mouth before she’s made a conscious decision to reply. “No, it’s not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Jon.”

“I— _what?”_ His face contorts with shock and hurt. “Y—you’d prefer I was—brain-damaged? Dead?”

“Jon,” says Basira from the corner, cutting him off. 

_“What?”_ Jon snaps. Georgie’s eye catches on the way his hands curl into claws against the sheet, the tension in his shoulders. In anyone else, she’d read that response as anger. In anyone else, she’d take that question as rhetorical, or perhaps passive-aggressive.

She’s vaguely aware that Basira is asking her to leave, but the last time she and Jon misunderstood each other like this, they fell out of touch for eight years and Jon got sucked into an evil eyeball cult in the meantime. Georgie doesn’t particularly want to repeat that mistake. 

She reaches out and rests one of her hands on top of his. “Of _course_ I wouldn’t rather you were dead!”

He glances up at her face, then down at their hands. His chin trembles. “Oh.” 

“Seriously,” says Basira from the corner. “A lot’s been going on, and I should _really_ get him up to speed—” 

“Fine,” says Georgie over her shoulder. “Just—give _me_ a minute, first.” Basira huffs, but remains quiet otherwise. Georgie turns back to Jon. “Listen. I want you to be alive, and I want you to be in my life. What I _don’t_ want is—” She pauses for a minute, fighting the lump in her throat. “To get my heart broken because someone I’m close to died in a horrible accident. _Especially_ if I might’ve been able to do something about it.”

Jon doesn’t say anything, but he tightens his fingers together where they’re interlaced with hers. Like he’s trying to squeeze her hand without moving his own out from underneath.

“I can’t be part of this,” says Georgie quietly. “I just _can’t._ But I _can_ be part of your life—as long as _this_ doesn’t become your entire life. Okay?”

Jon swallows hard. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can promise that.”

“So work at it until you can! Talk to people, or—or get a hobby. Do something aside from this. You deserve better than working yourself _literally_ to death.”

Jon coughs out the weakest, most forlorn laugh that Georgie’s ever heard, but afterward, he whispers, “Thank you.”

Georgie squeezes his hand, and they sit in silence for a few moments before Basira clears her throat, making Georgie jump. Well, she had said she’d only take a minute. “All right,” she says. “Just—Jon? Sometime this week, we’re going to sit down and talk. Over lunch, or while we take a nice walk, or—or even just over the phone, if something comes up. But you’re going to set aside some time, and we’re going to have a nice conversation with _absolutely no shop talk._ Okay?”

Jon nods emphatically, a familiar expression of determination settling over his features. “I can do that.”

“Good,” says Georgie, standing and making her way over to the door. Before she says goodbye, though, she turns back to fix him with a serious look. “I mean it,” she says. _“Call me.”_

* * *

And, a little while later, he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: (non-graphic) insect death, non-graphic discussion of the Prentiss incident and vague description of the worms, a character being disparaged/bullied (in a way that may read as aphobic or ableist but is not explicitly either) and developing feelings of self-loathing as a result, a character who is very anxious about being considered “weird” (w/out much self-reflection on what that means or why they think it’s bad)
> 
> Want to leave a comment but don't know what to say? Tell me what part you liked best!


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